Triple Decoction on a Belgian Tripel?

Title pretty much sums it up.
I'm thinking of doing a triple decoction because I want to try and do a parti-gayle batch with a Pilsner.

I've never tried any of these things (Tripel, Pilsner or Parti-gayle brewing), so, besides the obvious (to walk before I run) anyone have any suggestions.

Better yet, anyone tried this?

Just try either the partigyle or decoction mash alone. There's enough going on with either of those you can easily get in the weeds trying to do both the first time in the same batch.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Just try either the partigyle or decoction mash alone. There's enough going on with either of those you can easily get in the weeds trying to do both the first time in the same batch.

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The Parti-gyle isn't too bad. I usually just have enough grain to hit my O.G. with the first runnings for the big beer. Then the second and third runnings for the second beer.

You may want to have a little bit of LME on hand in case the O.G. on the smaller beer is a little low. My first parti-gyle needed "fortified" a bit.


As far a a decoction mash. That can be a bit of a challenge.

If you are looking for a good demo... Brewing TV has a good video on each technique. I totally dig the wookie/ewok parti-gyle.

Decoction mashing is not a challenge.

Just saccharify the entire grist as usual, then boil your grains. None of this pulling a decoction, saccharifying the decoction, then using the boiled portion to raise the temp of the main mash -- the only reason to do that is if you don't own a thermometer.

As far as getting the same flavors you would in a triple decoction, you can simply boil grains in for the times and proportions you would have in the trip. decoc. For example, let's say that in a traditional triple decoction, you would pull 1/3 of the grains each time and boil for 15 minutes. After doing all three decoctions, you would have boiled grain for the following times

0 minutes: (2/3) x (2/3) x (2/3) = 8/27, or 30% of your total grains

15 minutes: (1/3) x (2/3) x (2/3) + (2/3) x (1/3) x (2/3) + (2/3) x (2/3) x (1/3) = 12/27 = 45%

30 minutes: (1/3) x (1/3) x (2/3) + (1/3) x (2/3) x (1/3) + (2/3) x (1/3) x (1/3) = 6/27 = 22%

45 minutes: (1/3) x (1/3) x (1/3) = 1/27, or 4% (call it 5%)

See what I did there? In a traditional decoction, you would boil 1/3 of the grains, and not boil 2/3 of the grains, then mix everything back to together. Then you'd pull out another 1/3 of the grains, but within that second decoction, 1/3 of the grains have already boiled for 15 minutes, while the other 2/3 haven't seen any boiling yet. So you just keep on multiplying the fractions.

Anyway, after saccharification, take out 70% of your grains (everything except the bit that shouldn't boil at all). Boil those grains for 15. Then take out 45% of your total grains. Boil for another 15 minutes. Then take out everything except for 4-5% of your total. Boil for the final 15. Then mix all your grains together and sparge.

Done. It will add 45 minutes (plus heating time) to your brewday. Compared to the time it takes to do a traditional triple decoction, it's nothing! And as far as I can tell, you should get the same exact flavors.

drummstikk said:

Decoction mashing is not a challenge.

Just saccharify the entire grist as usual, then boil your grains. None of this pulling a decoction, saccharifying the decoction, then using the boiled portion to raise the temp of the main mash -- the only reason to do that is if you don't own a thermometer.

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That's not at all correct. In fact, you can't do that decoction technique without a thermometer.

Originally the intermediary saccharification would help improve mash efficiency when using poorly modified grains but that's not generally an issue these days. The incidental benefit -- which still applies -- is by saccharifying before the boil you get more sugars that are able to caramelize during the boil so you get improved melanoidin formation. Without those intermediary saccharification rests you don't get melanoidins because there's little to no sugar available until you reach the beta rest or higher.

drummstikk said:

Just saccharify the entire grist as usual, then boil your grains. None of this pulling a decoction, saccharifying the decoction, then using the boiled portion to raise the temp of the main mash -- the only reason to do that is if you don't own a thermometer.

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That's not a decoction and more than that, it's simply poor advice/logic.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

you get more sugars that are able to caramelize during the boil so you get improved melanoidin formation.

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I think I didn't explain myself very well, because we actually agree 100%!

In the traditional decoction, you're saccharifying and then boiling portions of the grist in steps, and you keep on repeating the same saccarification / boil steps over and over. Why? Because if you have 19th century undermodified malts, you need to boil some of them, and then return the boiled portion to saccharify again.

But nobody needs to do this anymore -- we can afford to simply saccharify, then boil to develop Maillards , and never saccharify again. Two steps.

In the simplified decoction, you saccharify the entire grist all at once (taking advantage of a well-modified modern malt), then you boil portions of the grist to develop Maillaird flavors.

As you pointed out, you will need a thermometer. It's the traditional decoction, not the simplified one, that uses the volume of the decoctions to raise the temp of the main mash.

Randar said:

That's not a decoction and more than that, it's simply poor advice/logic.

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Well, you saccharify to develop sugars, and then you boil portions of the mash to develop Maillard products. It's a decoction! It's faster than a traditional decoction, the difference being that you don't do any enzyme rests besides a single saccharification rest.

Here's a link to the original post explaining the simplified decoction: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/simplified-decoction-296152/

drummstikk said:

Well, you saccharify to develop sugars, and then you boil portions of the mash to develop Maillard products. It's a decoction! It's faster than a traditional decoction, the difference being that you don't do any enzyme rests besides a single saccharification rest.

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Look, you are missing some mechanics of a "decoction mash". Sure, you can call it a "decoction" because in the strict definition of the word, you are boiling grains in the attempt to concentrate flavor, but it is not a decoction mash, per se, because of what you are missing from the traditional process. Reader's digest version of what you are missing:

-Thick decoctions are pulled and heated to a rest at ~158°F for about 10 min before heating to boiling. This allows alpha-amylase enzymes to break down long chain dextrins and native starches to smaller constituents that will be further broken down when put back into the mash.

-In addition to melanoidin production, the boiling of the thick decoction bursts open the cell walls in the malt so that more starches and long chain dextrins are available when reintroduced to the mash for further break-down. (This reason and the above reason are why decoction mashes have greater efficiency.)


You may not care about either, but they are characteristic of a true decoction and by skipping these steps you are changing the characteristic by-products of a decoction mash schedule. There are many ways to skin a cat and I'm sure it makes great beer, but just because you boil grains (or do a reduction boil on a Scotch Ale for example) doesn't make it a decoction because you are skipping over reintroduction to enzymatic activity at each step that is characteristic of a decoction mash... hence, the process you describe isn't even part of the mash. As soon as you boil those grains and skip an additional rest, you are lautering, in effect.

IMO it is more than just semantics, but that is obviously JMO. Perhaps if you had called it "How to get more melanoidins without a decoction mash schedule", I wouldn't have even batted an eye?

Randar said:

Look, you are missing some mechanics of a "decoction mash".

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I appreciate the information, but I do understand the steps of a traditional decoction. Read my original post describing the Simplified Decoction -- I go through the motivation for modifying the traditional technique: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/simplified-decoction-296152/

Randar said:

it is not a decoction mash, per se, because of what you are missing from the traditional process.

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I suppose if you consider any deviation from traditional technique grounds for losing the naming rights, then we can't call it a decoction. Let's just call it a "Simplified Decoction", or if you prefer, a "Notcoction".

Randar said:

alpha-amylase enzymes to break down long chain dextrins and native starches to smaller constituents

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Sachharification still occurs in the Notcoction.

Randar said:

the boiling of the thick decoction bursts open the cell walls in the malt so that more starches and long chain dextrins are available when reintroduced to the mash for further break-down. (This reason and the above reason are why decoction mashes have greater efficiency.)

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This also happens in the Notcoction. You have the option of returning the boiled portion of grains back to the unboiled portion of the wort in the Notcoction, to saccharify the extra starches you've released from cell walls. That is what I've done every time I've tried it so far. But, because I am beginning with well-modified malts, I should be able to skip this step without significant detriment to clarity or flavor. I expect the loss in efficiency to be on the order of 5%. But if efficiency is why you do a decoction, that means that your time is worth (efficiency boost*$cost of malt bill) / (time spent decocting). For a 5 or 10 gallon batch, that's below minimum wage!

Randar said:

You may not care about either, but they are characteristic of a true decoction and by skipping these steps you are changing the characteristic by-products of a decoction mash schedule.

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I care about flavor development, and the Notcoction is optimized to produce Maillard flavors and reduce time.

Randar said:

just because you boil grains (or do a reduction boil on a Scotch Ale for example) doesn't make it a decoction because you are skipping over reintroduction to enzymatic activity at each step that is characteristic of a decoction mash...

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Flavors are developed in a decoction when the short-chain sugars that result from saccharification are heated to boiling with the concentrated amines found in the grist. The Notcoction involves 1) saccharification to produce sugars, followed by 2) boiling of those sugars with the grist.

Randar said:

As soon as you boil those grains and skip an additional rest, you are lautering, in effect.

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Exactly! Once you develop Maillard products, you're done, and it's time to lauter. That's the whole point. You develop decoction flavors straighaway, without wasting your time on using the boiled fractions of the grist to take the main mash through steps.

Even if you're already planning to do a step mash, though, the Notcoction will save you time -- instead of saccharifying each decoction separately, you can take the entire grist through a step mash, and then develop Maillard products with the reducing sugars that result.

So, just to avoid further confusion, here is a schematic of traditional and simplified decoctions:

Traditional:
0) Mash in the entire grist
1) Remove a fraction and protein rest and saccharify it
2) Boil the fraction
3) Return the fraction to the main mash. If the main mash is still at saccharification temperatures, saccharify whatever starches you've released by boiling. If you're on a mash-out decoction, then those solubilized starches will not be converted.
4) Go to 1) 0-2 more times.
5) Lauter

Simplified
0) Mash in the entire grist
1) Saccharify the entire grist
2) Boil fractions of the grist to produce your desired Maillard products
3) Return boiled fractions to the main mash if you believe your malt was not well-modified and there was significant starch solubilized by the boil. This will convert all the solubilized starches (If there were any to begin with)
4) Lauter

If it still seems confusing, check out this thread describing it in greater detail: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/simplified-decoction-296152/

drummstikk said:

So, just to avoid further confusion, here is a schematic of traditional and simplified decoctions:

Traditional:
0) Mash in the entire grist
1) Remove a fraction and protein rest and saccharify it
2) Boil the fraction
3) Return the fraction to the main mash. If the main mash is still at saccharification temperatures, saccharify whatever starches you've released by boiling. If you're on a mash-out decoction, then those solubilized starches will not be converted.
4) Go to 1) 0-2 more times.
5) Lauter

Simplified
0) Mash in the entire grist
1) Saccharify the entire grist
2) Boil fractions of the grist to produce your desired Maillard products
3) Return boiled fractions to the main mash if you believe your malt was not well-modified and there was significant starch solubilized by the boil. This will convert all the solubilized starches (If there were any to begin with)
4) Lauter

If it still seems confusing, check out this thread describing it in greater detail: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/simplified-decoction-296152/

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I'm not convinced you get the same flavors out of your process as a traditional decoction but I haven't tried it so I'll defer to your judgment there.

It might produce similar results as a single decoction but in the case of a multiple-step decoction I don't see how your process compares unless you are doing a step mash and then your notcoction process. That seems longer than just doing the multiple decoction mash. In that case I don't see how you're getting the same flavor complexity out of the notcoction process because with the multiple decoctions you're caramelizing sugars and starches to different degrees (statistically it is probable that some sugars and starches caramelized from the first decoction will get further caramelization in the second and third decoctions or the second but not the third decoction).

(Assume when I mention caramelization I mean both the caramelization and maillard reactions occuring simultaneously in the decoction boils.)

drummstikk said:

Sachharification still occurs in the Notcoction.

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That defines every mash schedule. However, in the case of a decoction mash, this is returned back to the enzyme-rich mash that still contains beta amylase enzymes (the protein rest -> Sacch rest is the primary step for this to occur). Beta amylase can only access the non-reducing end of a glucose chain, hence, by breaking down long chain glucose into more/shorter chain glucose, the beta amylase enzymes have access to more glucose chain ends and hence, can produce more maltose from it, leaving fewer long-chain glucose molecules unreduced. If, for example, you simply step-mash 148-158, you will not have this second enzymatic effect.

drummstikk said:

If it still seems confusing, check out this thread describing it in greater detail: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/simplified-decoction-296152/

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I don't know why you think I am confused and need you to post the link multiple times as if that changes the contents. I read it fine the first time you posted it several posts ago. Starting to look like thread-pimping. If all you're trying to do is add melanoidins and skip all the rest of the aspects of a decoction mash schedule, I have a simplified-simplified-decoction-like suggestion. Add melanoidin malt and be done with it. That seems to be the primary purpose of your method and I can vouch for its relative effectiveness.

well this is interesting...

I was a little worried that this would turn into a debate about the pros and cons of a traditional decoction technique, and sure enough...

The thing is, I haven't made a Triple or a Pilsner or a Parti-Gayle, but I have done a decoction mash. Last weekend in fact. I agree that it requires a lot of work, but I'm holding of judgment for a while as to the value of the technique.

But what I was really asking was whether or not triple decoction would have any ill effects on a Belgian style Tripel? And if there are any bits of advice for something I may not have thought about.

Thanks guys

brewjack said:

But what I was really asking was whether or not triple decoction would have any ill effects on a Belgian style Tripel? And if there are any bits of advice for something I may not have thought about.

Thanks guys

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The amount of maltiness/melanoidins may be higher than the typical style expectation (although the style is relatively wide, it's not THAT wide in terms of malt backbone), but I am curious to hear how it turns out for you.

Randar said:

However, in the case of a decoction mash, this is returned back to the enzyme-rich mash that still contains beta amylase enzymes

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I thought that in a single infusion mash, let's say at a temperature of 147F, both beta and alpha amylase are active. Beta amylase cuts as the branches of amylopectin, and alpha cuts at the ends, as you pointed out. In a traditional decoction, you can perform a beta rest, boil, and then do another alpha rest, true. But how does this produce a different flavor or mouthfeel than allowing the two enzymes to act at the same time in a single-infusion?

Randar said:

I don't know why you think I am confused and need you to post the link multiple times as if that changes the contents. I read it fine the first time you posted it several posts ago. Starting to look like thread-pimping.

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Sorry about that; my bad.

Randar said:

If all you're trying to do is add melanoidins and skip all the rest of the aspects of a decoction mash schedule

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Yes, that is exactly it!

Randar said:

I have a simplified-simplified-decoction-like suggestion. Add melanoidin malt and be done with it. That seems to be the primary purpose of your method and I can vouch for its relative effectiveness.

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It's a separate question, but the short answer is that if melanoidin malts came in a wider variety of colors (and flavors), then I would!

I think just one lovibond of melanoiding malt (20-30L if I recall) is not enough to mimic a double or triple decoction, because as ReverseApacheMaster points out, you get a complexity of flavors by boiling different portions of the grist for different lengths of time.

BTW, apache, you can still produce a complexity of melanoidins with the notcoction. See my post earlier in this thread, where I attempted an explanation of how it works. You could also refer to a different thread, which shall not be named lest I be accused of thread-pimping -- I explain the technique in detail there. Essentially, you just calculate what portion of the grist would have been boiled for different amounts of time in the traditional decoction. Then you boil those same fractions for the same amount of time after saccharifying the whole thing. Then lauter, and you're done.

brewjack said:

well this is interesting...

But what I was really asking was whether or not triple decoction would have any ill effects on a Belgian style Tripel? And if there are any bits of advice for something I may not have thought about.

Thanks guys

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I think it just depends on whether you want melanoidins in the beer or not.

For a given boil time and decoction size, a triple decoction gives you a greater proportion of lighter melanoidin flavors, and a smaller portion of the darker flavors. So if you're just trying to decide whether you like melanoidins in the style or not, you could try a single decoction to get just a single type of melanoidin flavor.

Then you can tweak the boil time and decoction size to hone in on the flavor you want. For example, if you want a darker type of melanoidin flavor, you could increase your boil time. And if you like the type of flavor you're getting, but just want more of it, you could increase the portion of the grist you're boiling.

Thanks guys,

The answer, I suppose, is sort of as I would expect. i.e. a different malt backbone, that's not traditional to the style, but *may* still work. I'm still fairly new to decoction mashing, so it may be helpful for me to taste it somewhere where it doesn't belong, so that I learn to single it out. I understand it in theory, but in practice it will be interesting to see.

Thanks again.

How about tannin? High pH and boiling mash = Bucket O Tannin....A decoction mash usually includes an acid rest. The mash pH is lowered. Then the mash can be boiled with out stripping tannins.

VladOfTrub said:

How about tannin? High pH and boiling mash = Bucket O Tannin....A decoction mash usually includes an acid rest. The mash pH is lowered. Then the mash can be boiled with out stripping tannins.

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Either way, traditional or simplified, you should definitely mash in at 40C for the acid rest, and adjust your pH with salts or acid.

VladOfTrub said:

How about tannin? High pH and boiling mash = Bucket O Tannin....A decoction mash usually includes an acid rest. The mash pH is lowered. Then the mash can be boiled with out stripping tannins.

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As long as you have your pH right, you don't have to worry about tannins. Using calcium chloride, gypsum, chalk, acidulated malt, acid rest, whatever your method of choice.

I've tried a mashout decoction similar to what drummstikk describes with the only intent to get melanoiden. The decoction was after a 60min sacc rest at 152F and an iodine test was used to check for starches (pH 5.40 @ 15 min, room temp). About 1/3 of the mash was boiled (about 1 qt/lb water/grain ratio) for 20 min and returned to the mash tun. I was attempting to get 168F but only got 163F. An iodine test showed some starch again, the mash was rested for 15min, a final iodine test showed complete conversion. I batch sparge so getting the mashout is not important and only getting to 163F probably helped in the conversion of the starch from the mashout decoction.

I think you'll get "some" flavor difference if the portion boiled is big enough and boiled for a significant time.